DownWithTyranny!

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

[9/30/2011] Refresher: In which we take another listen to Dvoŕák's Symphony No. 8 (continued)

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Finally we get to hear Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) raise the roof in the Finale of the Dvořák Eighth Symphony -- in his 1961 recording, from this anthology of Decca recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic. (Shh! Don't tell anybody, but afterward we're also going to hear the middle movements from his 1979 EMI recording with the Berlin Philharmonic.)

I mentioned that Václav Talich took a leisurely approach to the Scherzo; he also took a notably brisk approach to the first movement, while Herbert von Karajan and Klaus Tennstedt took a notably broader approach to the second. Here's Talich's first movement and Karajan's second, from his 1979 EMI recording, and then we continue on Karajan's notably fleeter-than-most Scherzo!

(Sunday we'll be hearing another distinguished Czech conductor, Václav Neumann, taking what are by international performance standards quickish tempos in the Dvoŕák Seventh Symphony, and I'm going to point out that it's in the context of a band of orchestral musicians whose seemingly inborn instincts are to songfulness.)

Well, here we are a mere movement away from completing the symphony, and it was the singular exhilaration of that movement that set me off on the Dvoŕák Eighth to begin with. So let's sneak in an extra performance of the Finale. Hmm, why don't we hear how that Tennstedt-LPO performance, which started out so memorably, turns out? (Quite rousingly, I can tell you -- unhurried and while living the music fully building a good head of steam, notwithstanding the unlovely acoustics of the Royal Festival Hall.)

Thursday, September 25, 2003

[9/25/2011] In "Don Carlos," can Posa talk King Phillip out of his proto-Cheneyite concept of bringing about peace? (continued)

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Ettore Bastianini as Posa confronts Boris Christoff as Phillipat Salzburg in 1960. In a moment we're going to hear their 1961 commercial recording of the scene.

FOUR "HIGHLIGHTS"

Before we hear the whole scene -- or, actually, the first part of the scene (after the political section, Phillip changes the subject) -- I just want to highlight four especially vivid, overlapping chunks.

Nos. 1 and 3 are Posa's big solos within the scene: the first his incredibly vivid, and incredibly horrifying, account of the devastation being inflicted on Flanders and the Flemings, the second his comeback to Phillip's assertion that with the sword he's bringing peace to Flanders. Each builds to an especially impassioned peroration, which in turn bring forth even more appalling rationalizations from the king. Nos. 2 and 4 overlap Nos. 1 and 3, picking up at Posa's big narrative climaxes and carrying through Phillip's responses. (No. 2, by the way, brings us to the chunk we heard last Sunday, which started this whole thing.)

[Note: We've got double performances of Nos. 1 and 3 because I had misplaced the 1950 Met performance with Robert Merrill and as an alternate made audio files of Sherrill Milnes from this 1972 performance -- before stumbling on the 1980 video clip with Milnes and Paul Plishka, where Milnes actually sounds better than he does here. Then I found the 1950 performance and extracted the Merrill excerpts, but since the Milnes ones were already in place, I didn't have the heart to delete them.]

POSA: Oh, my lord, I have just come from Flanders,that country once so fair --now bereft of any gleam of light,it inspires horror and seems a silent grave!The homeless orphanroams the roads in tears;fire and sword destroy everything,mercy is banished.The river's blushing watersappear to the eye to run with blood;the mother's cry, for her childrenwho have died, rings on the air.[start of HIGHLIGHT 2]Oh, God be praised,who hast permitted meto tell of this cruel agony,that it should be known to the King!

I'm afraid I haven't been entirely kind to Mario Sereni here, introducing his Posa with him flatting badly on D and then the E-flat at "Ah! sia benedetto Iddio." I might argue, though, that this reminds us that: (a) these things happen in live performances, (b) this is demanding music in the context of an emotionally intense, physically draining scene, and (c) Sereni's baritone is underweight for this music to begin with -- he has to really pile it on to fill the music out. Nevertheless, he gets himself back on track surprisingly, and overall I find an awful lot to like in his performance.

POSA: Oh, God be praised,who hast permitted meto tell of this cruel agony,that it should be known to the King!PHILLIP: By blood alone could I havepeace in the world;my sword has crushedthe pride of the innovators,who delude the peoplewith lying dreams . . .Death in my handhas a teeming future.POSA: What! You think by sowing deathto plant for the future?PHILLIP: Cast a glance at Spain!The worker in the city,the peasant on the land,loyal to God and King,has no complaint.That same peace I bestowupon my Netherlands!POSA: A horrible and horrifying peace!It is the peace of the grave!Oh King, may history not haveto say of you:He was a second Nero![start of HIGHLIGHT 3]

POSA: Is this the peace yougive the world?Such a gift awakens terrorand profound horror!The priest is a hangman,a brigand every soldier!The people suffer and die in silence,your empire isa vast, horrific desert;all are heardto curse Phillip, yes, curse him![start of HIGHLIGHT 4]Like a god of redemptionyou remake the whole world,soar in lofty flightabove all other kings!Through you, let the world be made joyful!Bestow freedom!

POSA: Like a god of redemptionyou remake the whole world,soar in lofty flightabove all other kings!Through you, let the world be made joyful!Bestow freedom!PHILLIP: Oh, fantastic dreamer!You will change your way of thinking,when you know the heart of manas Phillip knows it!Now, no more! . . .The King has heard nothing . . .have no fear![Darkly] But beware of the Grand Inquisitor!

PHILLIP: Stay!why have you notyet asked to beadmitted to my presence?I am well able to rewardall my protectors.You have faithfully servedthe Crown, I know.POSA: What could I hopefrom the favor of kings?Sire, I am well content,the law is my defense.PHILLIP: I like a proud spirit,I pardon boldness . . .not always . . . You have quitthe profession of arms.Can a man of your stamp,a soldier of exalted rank,remain inactive?POSA: Wherever for Spain a sword is needed,an avenging hand,a custodian of honor,there full soon will my swordsteeped in blood flash bright.PHILLIP: I know it well . . . but whatcan I do for you?POSA: Nothing! No . . . nothing for me,but for others . . .PHILLIP: What do you mean, for others?POSA: I will speak, sire, if I do not offend.PHILLIP: Speak![start of HIGHLIGHT 1]POSA: Oh, my lord, I have just come from Flanders,that country once so fair --now bereft of any gleam of light,it inspires horror and seems a silent grave!The homeless orphanroams the roads in tears;fire and sword destroy everything,mercy is banished.The river's blushing watersappear to the eye to run with blood;the mother's cry, for her childrenwho have died, rings on the air.[start of HIGHLIGHT 2]Oh, God be praised,who hast permitted meto tell of this cruel agony,that it should be known to the King!PHILLIP: By blood alone could I havepeace in the world;my sword has crushedthe pride of the innovators,who delude the peoplewith lying dreams . . .Death in my handhas a teeming future.POSA: What! You think by sowing deathto plant for the future?PHILLIP: Cast a glance at Spain!The worker in the city,the peasant on the land,loyal to God and King,has no complaint.That same peace I bestowupon my Netherlands!POSA: A horrible and horrifying peace!It is the peace of the grave!Oh King, may history not haveto say of you:He was a second Nero![start of HIGHLIGHT 3]Is this the peace yougive the world?Such a gift awakens terrorand profound horror!The priest is a hangman,a brigand every soldier!The people suffer and die in silence,your empire isa vast, horrific desert;all are heardto curse Phillip, yes, curse him![start of HIGHLIGHT 4]Like a god of redemptionyou remake the whole world,soar in lofty flightabove all other kings!Through you, let the world be made joyful!Bestow freedom!PHILLIP: Oh, fantastic dreamer!You will change your way of thinking,when you know the heart of manas Phillip knows it!Now, no more! . . .The King has heard nothing . . .have no fear![Darkly] But beware of the Grand Inquisitor!

I kicked around an eventual text-translation note in my head so much that I forgot I never actually wrote it. The translation of the texts of this scene are pretty much straight Peggie Cochrane's for the Decca Record Co., allowing for some Americanization. I think Peggie was usually very good about communicating the sense of the texts she translated, and while I have lots of individual quibbles (like the notion that Posa thinks Phillip could go down in history as "a second Nero"; that's interpretation -- all Posa imagines history saying is: "He was Nero"), for this project I shut down my quibbles in the interest of sanity. (Mine.)

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

We've got two performances of the complete Monastery Scene, and then two performances of, basically, the Posa-Carlos meeting. Actually, we've already heard the "Dio, che nell'alma" duet portion of the 1964 Met performance, in the aforementioned March 2010 Don Carlos post; now we'll back up to hear the full scene, from Posa's entrance. (Since this is a performance of the four-act Don Carlos, it doesn't include Carlos's "Al chiostro di San Giusto solo. My original thought was that we'd hear the opening of the scene -- the atmospheric Prelude plus the Monks' Chorus, especially since the Monk is Justino Díaz -- and then jump to Posa's entrance, but we really don't need to hear the Met horns struggling that afternoon with the treacherous horn writing of the Prelude or the none-too-seemly Met monks' chorus, and in fact Díaz has a rough go at the Monk's none-too-easy solos.)

The 1961 DG recording, among many other virtues (including some of Ettore Bastianini's best singing on records), has a terrific Monk in Alessandro Maddalena (even if he and conductor Gabriele Santini don't quite sync their parts), maybe the best I've heard. In the 1958 Covent Garden performance, note that the Carlos (Jon Vickers) and Rodrigo (Tito Gobbi) actually start the great "Dio, che nell'alma infondere" oath duet (and the reprise as well) as if it really were a prayer rather than a college cheer -- for a really lovely result, I think, and yet with stinting on the tingle level in the climaxes.

Scene: The tomb of Charles V in the monastery of San Yuste. A chorus of monks is praying in the offstage chapel. Onstage, a kneeling monk prays before the tomb.

MONKS: Charles, the supreme emperor,is no longer more than mute dust.At the feet of his heavenly makerhis haughty soul now trembles.A MONK: He wanted to rule over the world,forgetting the one who in the skyguides the stars on their faithful path.His pride was immense;his error was profound.MONKS: Charles, the supreme emperor &c.A MONK: Great is God alone, and if he wills ithe makes heaven and earth tremble.Ah! Merciful God,compassionate to the sinner,you will grantthat peace and pardondescend on him from heaven.MONKS: Let your wrath not fall,not fall on his soul.ALL: Great is God alone.He alone is great.[Day dawns slowly. Enter DON CARLOS, pale and agitated. The chorus of monks exits the chapel, crosses the scene, and disappears into the corridors of the cloister.]DON CARLOS: At the monastery of San Yuste, where my grandfatherCharles V ended his life, weary of his grandeur,I seek in vain peace and forgetfulness of the past.Of the one who was stolen from methe image wanders with me into this icy cloister.MONK [rising and approaching CARLOS]: The sorrow of earthfollows us even into the cloister.The heart's war onlyin heaven will be calmed.CARLOS: His voice! My heart trembles!I thought -- what terror! --I saw the emperor,who in his habit was concealinghis breastplate and golden crown.It's said that he still appears in the cloister!MONK [retiring]: The heart's warin heaven will be calmed.DON CARLOS: O terror! O terror![RODRIGO, THE MARQUIS OF POSA, enters.]RODRIGO, MARQUIS OF POSA: It's him! Himself! The prince!CARLOS: O my Rodrigo!RODRIGO: Your highness!CARLOS: Is it you I clutch to my bosom?RODRIGO: Oh, my prince! My lord!CARLOS: It's heaven that sends you to me in my sorrow.RODRIGO: O beloved prince!CARLOS: Consoling angel!RODRIGO: The hour has struck.The Flemish people call you.You must help them,make yourself their savior!But what do I see? What pallor, what distress!A lamp of sorrow shines in your eyes.You're mute! you sigh! there's sadness in your heart.My Carlos, with me,with me share your grievance, your sorrow!CARLOS: My savior, my brother, my confidant,let me weep in your bosom.RODRIGO: Pour out to my heart your cruel torment.Let your soul not be closed to me.Speak!CARLOS: You wish it?Learn of my misfortune,and of the horrible shaftthat has pierced my heart.I love . . . with a guilty love . . . Elisabeth!RODRIGO: Your mother! Just heavens!CARLOS: What pallor!You turn your eyes to the ground!Unhappy me! Even you, even you,my Rodrigo, distance yourself from me?RODRIGO: No, Rodrigo still loves you,I can swear it to you!You suffer? You suffer?Then for me the universe disappears!CARLOS: O my Rodrigo!RODRIGO: My prince!This secret, has it been discovered yet by the King?CARLOS: No.RODRIGO: Then obtain from himleave for Flanders.Silence your heart;you'll do deeds worthy of you.You'll learn among an oppressedpeople how to be a king.CARLOS: I will follow you, brother.[A bell sounds.]RODRIGO: Listen!The doors of the sanctuary are already opening.Soon Phillip and the queen will come.CARLOS: Elisabeth!RODRIGO: Buck up beside me your vacillating spirit!Your star will once again shine brightly in the heavens!Ask heaven for the virtue of the strong!CARLOS and RODRIGO: God, who in our soulswished to instill hope and love,in our hearts you must kindlea desire for liberty.We swear together to liveand die together.RODRIGO: On earth, in heaven --BOTH: -- your goodnesscan unite us.Ah, God, who in our souls &c.RODRIGO: They're coming now.CARLOS: O terror!Just seeing her I tremble!RODRIGO: Courage![PHILLIP, leading ELISABETH, appears in the midst of the monks. PHILLIP kneels for a moment before the tomb of Charles V, then proceeds on his way. The monks are heard from inside.]MONKS: Carlo, the great emperor &c.CARLOS: He has made her his!I've lost her!I've lost her. He has made her his!Great God!RODRIGO: Come close to me,close to me. You'll have more strength,more strength!CARLO: He's made her his! I've lost her!He's made her his!BOTH: We'll live together and die together!Our last breathwill be, will be a shout, a shout:Liberty!We'll live together &c.

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

[9/24/2011] Perelman Tonight: On the town in Hong Kong -- Part 3 of "Mama Don't Want No Rice" (Chapter 4 of "The Swiss Family Perelman") (continued)

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Mr. Haw's Tiger Balm Gardens, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

"Mr. Haw has presented to various hospitals and deserving charities an amount in excess of eighteen million Hong Kong dollars," replied the spokesman. "He is a beloved figure, asking nothing for himself but the right to serve his fellow man." . . .

"Has Mr. Haw given any inkling yet as to who will inherit his moola? If not, I should like to include my name among the legatees."

-- from the conclusion of "Mama Don't Want No Rice"

The Swiss Family PerelmanChapter 4, "Mama Don't Want No Rice,"Part 3 of 3

"Now exactly what do you wish to know?" the interpreter began. Feeling that some preamble was required, I teed off with salutations from several American mandarins of comparable importance -- Eugene S. Grace, Lee Shubert, and the chairman of the New York State Boxing Commission.

"In a few badly chosen words, how would you sum up the theme of the Tiger Balm Gardens?" I inquired.

"Mr. Haw has presented to various hospitals and deserving charities an amount in excess of eighteen million Hong Kong dollars," replied the spokesman. "He is a beloved figure, asking nothing for himself but the right to serve his fellow man."

"He exudes an aura of goodness," I agreed courteously, cracking a sunflower seed between my mandibles, "but to return to the meaning of the Gardens. I sensed a definite surrealist influence, as though Max Ernst and the St. Louis Cardinals had collaborated on their design."

"The purely material is no longer of any consequence to Mr. Haw," the interpreter explained. "Spiritual salvation alone can save mankind from the abyss, as he points out in today's editorial in his three Chinese-language newspapers."

"I am hastening home to read it," I assured him. "But before I do, may I be allowed to put one more query?"

"What is that?"

"Has Mr. Haw given any inkling yet as to who will inherit his moola? If not, I should like to include my name among the legatees."

"I am afraid there is a fundamental cleavage between the East and the West," apologized the subordinate. "This way to your rickshaw, please." Nevertheless, as I bowled back to the Repulse Bay Hotel, gently flicking the coolie with a switch to ward off the flies, the audience did not seem wholly without benefit. It had given me an insight into the complexities of the Oriental mind such as one never gets from the sixty-five-cent luncheon at Chin Lee's and it had enabled the family in my absence to dream up a brand-new batch of complaints.

The most grievous, predictably, came from the missy, who was loud in her accusations that I had withheld her from the night life of Hong Kong. "What did I pack my evening dresses for, to wear in a Malay prahu?" she blubbered. "If I were Alexis Smith you'd be in a cummerbund fast enough." She contemptuously brushed aside my protest that Catteraugus, New York, was more diverting by far; she knew all about the evil waterfront haunts, the swarthy lascars, and the Eurasian adventuresses from the novels of Achmed Abdullah.

The upshot was that at midnight we found ourselves in a titanic, murky cabaret almost devoid of heat and customers, watching the only untalented Negro in the world execute a cakewalk to the music of a Filipino fife and drum corps. At its conclusion, as though my hair was not sufficiently streaked with silver, he broke into "Mammy's Little Coal Black Rose." I pushed away the plate of stone-cold spaghetti and signaled to the waiter.

"Bring me a check and a steel-blue automatic," I directed. My wife plucked at my sleeve, but I ignored her. "Also, please ask that minstrel to wait for me in his dressing room."

"Listen," she said insistently, "some people in that corner are waving at you." The arrivals proved to be an old college classmate now in the consular service and two extremely decorative chickadees, from Canton and Outer Mongolia respectively. A coalition was quickly arranged, half a dozen bottles of Polish vodka burgeoned from the tablecloth, and in a trice we were yoked in close harmony, warbling "Brunonia, Mother of Men" in pidgin. Before long a pair of laughing almond eyes cajoled me to the dance floor, where my 1922-vintage toddle excited wide admiration, especially from those who had never seen a man dancing with a pair of laughing almond eyes.

I had just consented after considerable suasion to call on the fair Tartar some afternoon and inspect a rare old sheepskin which had been in her family since the reign of Kublai Khan when my wife was stricken with one of her infrequent migraine headaches. There was no possible remedy but to frog-march me into a cab, drive to the hotel, and bind my hands to the bedpost with a sheet. This relieved her suffering somewhat, and soon the only sound in the corridor was her uneven breathing, interspersed with maledictions I had not dreamt she possessed.

Three days later, in a freezing wind that turned our noses blue with cold, we swayed up the accommodation ladder of the Kochleffel, buffeted by coolies groaning under our trunks. The harbor traffic flowed on briskly around the ship, oblivious of the importance of the occasion; toplofty little steamers bound for Macao rocked up-river, Kowloon-side ferries scraped past the bows, and quaint junks wallowed by, laden with Parker pens, self-winding Rolexes, and other imports vital to China's existence.

Free of her buoy at last, the vessel moved at half speed past the bare brown hills; the last cluster of government buildings dropped astern, and we were at sea. Already the bar had begun to echo with guttural commands of "Jonges! Bring me here a Bols!" and toasts to Wilhelmina. Knocking the embers from my pipe into a lifeboat to prevent their scattering, I descended to our cabins. My three companions sat in the quickening gloom amid jumbled suitcases. It was obvious that their moral barometer was falling fast.

"Chin up, friends!" I adjured them jovially. "Before you know it, you'll be in Java."

"And that's practically home," added my wife in a lifeless voice. She rose and stared thoughtfully out the porthole. "Did I ever tell you," she went on, "that in order to marry you, I jilted an explorer?"

"Honestly?" I asked. "What did you tell him?"

"I wish I could remember," she murmured. "It sure would come in handy."

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AND WITH THIS GRIM TABLEAU WE ONCE AGAINBID THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN "BON VOYAGE"

Monday, September 22, 2003

"'Are you implying by any chance, madam,' I asked scathingly, 'that I would deliberately haul three persons on a five-thousand-mile journey through swamp and mangrove just to catch a glimpse of a bunch of superbly formed, mocha-colored young women in their nether garments? Because if you are,' I said, rising haughtily, 'I have nothing more to say.'"

-- from tonight's installment of "Mama Don't Want No Rice"

The Swiss Family PerelmanChapter 4, "Mama Don't Want No Rice,"Part 2 of 3

To overcome such a hash of obscurantism and prejudice was a task calculated to intimidate a lesser man, but I flatter myself I brought it off rather well. Tapping a monogrammed Zira on the wafer-thin, solid gold cigarette case conferred on me by the Sublime Porte in connection with certain trifling services in the matter of the Missing Halvah, I pointed out with a silky smile that through a freak of bookkeeping, I alone was privileged to endorse our express cheques, which gave me what is known in sporting circles as an edge. "Do you not think, cara mia," I pursued, "that, though undeniably colorful and renowned for its hospitality, Hong Kong would not be the most ideal place for an attractive matron -- who, parenthetically, is not getting any younger -- and two helpless minors to go on the beach? I ask this, mind you, in an altogether objective spirit, knowing that your opinion will be couched likewise."

"You rat," replied my wife, employing a pet name she had found useful in domestic crises when logic failed. It being self-evident that she should never have crossed foils with so superior an adversary, I gallantly forgave her temerity and proceeded to outline our itinerary: two weeks' voyage aboard the M/S Kochleffel along the periphery of Java via the South China Sea, calling at Batavia, Semarang, and Surabaya, and thence northward to Macassar.

"What happens there?" she asked wearily, a look of dumb resignation investing her face. "I suppose we all remove our drawers and plunge into the canebrake."

"In the hands of Disraeli, irony can be a formidable weapon," I rejoined. "In a lout it becomes merely offensive. At Macassar we transfer to the Cinnabar, a snug little coaster in the interisland copra trade, which will convey us to Pare-Pare, Donggala, Menado, Ternate, Morotai, Sorong (the westernmost tip of New Guinea), Batjan, and Amboina -- in short, a sketchy circumnavigation of Celebes and the historic Spice Islands. I also plan, if the changing monsoon permits, to pay a visit to Banda Neira, that celebrated outpost of the Dutch nutmeg trade."

"There must be a gimmick in all this," she observed, moodily gnawing a piece of stem ginger. "In twenty years I have yet to detect you in a disinterested act."

"There is," I acknowledged. "The terminal point for our soiled laundry will be that jewel of the Lesser Sundas, the island of Bali."

"Aha!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "Everything falls into place. I was puzzled by the goatish gleam in your eye, but now I'm tuned in."

"Are you implying by any chance, madam," I asked scathingly, "that I would deliberately haul three persons on a five-thousand-mile journey through swamp and mangrove just to catch a glimpse of a bunch of superbly formed, mocha-colored young women in their nether garments? Because if you are," I said, rising haughtily, "I have nothing more to say."

"That," she said succinctly, "will be a relief all around -- eh, kids?" The children's reply was inaudible, mainly because they had taken a powder during our tête-à-tête and made a beeline for Pedder Street, the informal bourse of Hong Kong. On being coralled outside the Swatow Lace Store, they disclosed a flimflam worthy of Ponzi, having thimblerigged the money-changers with a dizzying parlay of soap wrappers into Portuguese escudos into Singapore dollars. I could not bring myself to reprove them, particularly since they had cleared a tidy profit, but as a lesson to cut me into their grift in future, I made them finance a tour of the Tiger Balm Gardens at Causeway Bay.

This curious nonesuch, a conceit of Aw Boon Haw, the noted patent-medicine taipan and philanthropist, beggars description; it is at once a potpourri of Madame Tussaud's waxworks, the castle of Otranto, and a theatrical prop shop, the whole tinctured with fumes of the Mexican drug called mescal. Just what its eighteen acres of nightmare statuary, turrets, grottoes, mazes, and cloud-borne pagodas signify, nobody on earth knows -- not even its proud parent, upon whom I called for a fast exegesis next morning at his headquarters in Wanchai Road.

Prior to our interview, Mr. Haw's interpreter, a Celestial version of Russell Birdwell, coated me with the customary schmaltz about his employer's humble origins, business genius, and benevolence. He then expanded with equal tedium on the virtues of Tiger Balm itself, which he unhesitatingly hailed as a specific for everything from St. Anthony's fire to milk leg. Apparently this was the universal belief, for I afterward observed Chinese air passengers rubbing it on their foreheads to forestall airsickness, at the same time smearing it furtively on the fuselage to insure the plane's staying aloft. For a preparation consisting largely of menthol and balsam, it undoubtedly has extraordinary powers. They may derive from Mr. Haw himself, a mettlesome old party in carpet slippers, who gripped my hand with such extraordinary vigor that I was forced whimpering to my knees.

Sunday, September 21, 2003

"I refuse to taste another spoonful of that excelsior!" announced the margravine in a ringing voice. "We've been on this blasted reef four days and all we've eaten is barnacles and boiled string! I want something that sticks to the ribs."

The Swiss Family PerelmanChapter 4, "Mama Don't Want No Rice,"Part 1 of 3

ON A DANK WINTER'S DAY shortly after the Chinese New Year, the population of Upper Lascar Row in Hong Kong was enjoying its midmorning snack of bêche-de-mer and jasmine tea when the street was galvanized by the advent of a quartet of foreign devils so manifestly aching to be plundered that a mighty hosanna welled up the length of Queen's Road Central. Abacuses began clicking furiously, catchpenny ivories of the goddess Kwan Yin bloomed on every curio dealer's shelf, factory-fresh Ming horses were hastily baptized with dust to simulate age, and tempting whiffs of Lapsang Soochong wafted about to decoy the Outer Barbarians.

While the latter bore no placard proclaiming their nationality, certain obscure indications tended to establish them as an American family. In typically Yankee matriarchal style, the party was headed by a well-preserved woman of thirty-odd, her features distorted by an insensate craving for bargains and an iron resolve to paper the Thieves' Market with her husband's money. Trotting at her heels, as obedient as a coach-dog, came the present deponent, bearing in his arms the gallimaufry of opium lamps, snuff-bottles, door-knockers, sandalwood fans, and ceremonial scrolls she had bartered for his heart's blood. A man of rare gentleness, possessed of almost Socratic wisdom and a patience outrivaling Job's, he recognized no law but his wife's airy caprice; at her bidding (provided, of course, that he was not otherwise occupied), he was prepared to scale the snows of Everest or plumb deepest Lake Titicaca. Straggling behind and alternately whining, sassing their parents, and cudgeling each other, there followed two wiry hooligans in levis and polychromatic flannel jumpers.

It was a sight for sore eyes, this close-knit, harmonious little company sprinkling valuta indiscriminately over the crown colony, and many miraculous cures were subsequently reported by local opticians. The day dawns, nevertheless, when even the Comstock Lode yields up nothing but gravel, and finally, on the very brink of insolvency, I brought the juggernaut to a halt. Straining at a gnat and swallowing the smoke of a Camel, I slapped from my wife's hand the Sung pipkin she had purchased with our last greenback.

"That's enough rubbish for one day, sweetheart," I hinted. "Back to the carbarn before I touch a whip to your flanks." My sally, as I anticipated, awoke no response from the stolid creature, whose sense of humor seldom rose above the Punch and Judy level. Flushed with resentment, eyes akimbo, she planted herself squarely in my path and declined to move. Fortunately, I happened to recall an apothegm of the T'ang dynasty to the effect that more flies may be captured with honey than with vinegar. I adroitly introduced the subject of food and suggested that we have a spot of tiffin in a tiny Szechuanese restaurant nearby, where the sweet-and-sour squid and gedämpfte kelp boasted an international reputation.

"I refuse to taste another spoonful of that excelsior!" announced the margravine in a ringing voice. "We've been on this blasted reef four days and all we've eaten is barnacles and boiled string! I want something that sticks to the ribs."

By now a crowd of several hundred Chinese was pressing in on us, eager to miss none of the fireworks; so, distributing to them a rough translation of the proceedings in the Fukien dialect, concluding with an impassioned appeal never to marry, never to have children, and never to travel abroad with their wives and children, I made our adieux. We dined sumptuously on triple-decker sandwiches and quadruple malteds at a busy soda fountain off Chater Road, whose neon lighting and ulcerous tempo afforded a reasonably repugnant facsimile of our neighborhood drugstore.

Over the postprandial Bisodol tablet, I bade my bride close her eyes and placed in her outstretched palm a bulky envelope. Her wee brow wrinkled in perplexity as she spelt out the destination of the steamer tickets within. "What's this?" she asked suspiciously. "Why does it stand 'Macassar' on these?"

"Because that's where the steamer goes, honey," I smiled. "It's the principal port on the island of Celebes."

"Well -- er -- vaguely," I hedged. "About twenty-seven hundred miles as the crow flies, more or less. Naturally, we won't ---- "

"Just a second, Jocko," she interrupted, quivering with anger. "Do I interpret this to mean that you inveigled me all the way to Siam and then switched the deck on us?"

"Of course not," I said placatingly. "It's a little extra dividend -- kind of a warm-up for Siam, so to speak. By the time you get back from the Moluccas -- if you ever do come back -- Siam will look like Rockefeller Plaza."

Exactly as instinct had warned me, the poor thing kicked up the most preposterous fuss. She drew a ghoulish picture of a remote and unexplored archipelago swarming with vampire bats, anthropophagi, and virulent diseases; cited some absurd fiddle-faddle about the war in Java (a grotesque designation for the minor police action in which the Dutch, to preserve order, had unavoidably bombed Djokjakarta and were being forced to kill a few thousand extremists); and having pilloried me as irresponsible, a delayed juvenile, and an erotic dreamer nourished on Terry and the Pirates, flung her arms around the children and defied Lucifer himself to drag her to the East Indies.

TOMORROW NIGHT IN PART 2 OF "MAMA DON'T WANT NO RICE": "You rat!" -- the "margrave" tries subtle persuasion on the "margravine"

Saturday, September 20, 2003

[9/20/2011] Perelman Tonight: Hawaii to Hong Kong -- Part 3 of "The Wild Blue Yonder" (Chapter 3 of "The Swiss Family Perelman) (continued)

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The ancient leaky Wallah-Wallah was almost scuppers awash.

"Inevitably, of course, and by that nimble club-car ratiocination in which the upper brackets engage at the drop of a bond, the true culprit stood revealed -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Great Betrayer, working with his Red cohorts in the unions, had shackled free enterprise, deflowered the American Way, and reduced us to the status of witless helots."

-- from tonight's installment of "The Wild Blue Yonder"

The Swiss Family PerelmanChapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder,"Part 3 of 3

Five days after we had slid through the Golden Gate, the ship rounded Diamond Head and there ensued a feverish twelve-hour kaleidoscope of paper leis, tanned Miami bail-jumpers chanting spurious Hawaiian Lieder, and raw fish drowned in a species of library paste called poi.

Bowed under armloads of tin ukuleles and promotional literature lavished on us by the Chamber of Commerce, we parked the striplings at the Outrigger Canoe Club with orders to acquire a second-degree burn and canvassed the shops of Waikiki Beach. The boast that they contain the world's most hideous curios is, in my opinion, pure chauvinism. True, they have managed to torture rattan, clay, and sea-shells into some extraordinarily repellent knick knacks, but I saw nothing even remotely as emetic as the worry-birds and musical toilets of my own Sixth Avenue.

The afternoon was marred by only one slight contretemps. We were just leaving Gump's, where my wife had spent an hour cooing over that shop's collection of coral and spinach jade, when Mr. Richard Gump breathlessly overtook us. With some concern, he called attention to an angry swelling in my breast-pocket, offering to summon medical assistance if necessary. I pooh-poohed his anxiety, supposing it to be merely a hernia induced by overexertion. What was our surprise, therefore, to discover that a Han jade cup, formerly the property of the Dowager Empress of China, had fallen into my clothes unbeknownst to me. As soon as the mystery was cleared up, we all enjoyed a hearty chuckle at Gump's expense and he conducted us back to the dock personally to make sure we had incurred no untoward effects from our visit.

By mid-Pacific the tropical heat had wrought a subtle transformation aboardship; the officers blossomed out in whites, passengers sorted themselves into practical jokers, self-made men, close personal friends of Mr. MacArthur, and similar bores, and a spirit of merrymaking as uncompromising as that of the borscht circuit made itself manifest. Every evening vast, frenzied cocktail parties raged in the Bubbling Well Bar, tendered by salvage tycoons and kittenish Southern harridans ablaze with diamonds. At mealtimes the public address system was constantly warbling "Happy Birthday to You" to signalize the imminence of senility, and august executives in paper hats and rompers capered grimly through the passageways, braying on horns. It was a time to try men's souls.

To what degree the destruction of Manila and the anguish her inhabitants had endured shook the equilibrium of some of our fellow travelers was made clear soon after our arrival there. "Do you know what I had to pay for a box of beauty clay here?" I heard an elderly dragon with a resurrected face indignantly demand of her companion. "Three pesos -- a dollar-fifty! Why, you can get the same thing in Grosse Pointe for forty cents!" The other Eumenides hissed sympathetically. "It's a scandal," one assented, "and can you imagine living in all that rubble the way they do? Not an ounce of self-respect." Several other disgruntled observers, whose cabs had been delayed in traffic on the Escolta owing to reconstruction, surmised that granting the islands their independence had caused the mischief. The Filipinos were not ready for it, they declared sagely.

Inevitably, of course, and by that nimble club-car ratiocination in which the upper brackets engage at the drop of a bond, the true culprit stood revealed -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Great Betrayer, working with his Red cohorts in the unions, had shackled free enterprise, deflowered the American Way, and reduced us to the status of witless helots. Now, had Dewey been elected . . . Their shoulders were racked with dry sobs.

It demands hair-trigger caution on a trans-Pacific cruise, not to say the reflexes of a circus aerialist, to dodge the sightseeing which becomes epidemic the moment the ship touches port. Before the screw has quite stopped revolving, busloads of tourists begin disappearing into the scrub to eavesdrop on some rachitic aborigine at his vespers or gape at the headstone of a forgotten conquistador.

At Manila, while we managed to by-pass the usual shrines, dungeons, and fortifications, we were cozened into visiting a cigar factory, an experience which for sheer ennui transcends even the vaudeville turn of Benny Fields. It took a sizable number of gimlets and a trip to the Miramar, the boîte de nuit favored of the moment, to dispel the effects. Anybody interested in ravishing women -- not in the Sabine sense, purely in viewing some exquisite lassies -- will find his sensibilities agreeably teased there. The dance floor swarmed with enchanting young Filipinas who wore the transparent puff sleeves of pifia cloth characteristic of the locale and danced the paso doble with the verve of Argentinita.

At the invitation of the manager, a sinister bonze straight out of Raymond Chandler sporting a mouthful of gold teeth, we passed an instructive hour in his gambling rooms overhead. I was amused to hear how quickly word spread that I had entered the establishment; the croupiers were taut with expectancy and on every hand I heard awed whispers of "There's the man who took the Greek Syndicate at Monte Carlo two years ago!"

Their apprehensiveness, however, was unwarranted. I was in no mood for play, and except for the trifling three or four thousand I negligently staked to humor my wife, stifling a yawn the while, I was richly content to study the passing scene. I had just become engrossed in studying a shapely, sloe-eyed mestiza with flowerlike hands who was dealing blackjack when the mem decided my eyes were overstrained and, grasping me firmly by the scruff, catapulted me into a droshky.

Amid a cataclysmic downpour that drummed against her ports like hail, the President Cleveland moved at long last into the harbor of Hong Kong. Narrowly missing Victoria and the Peak, shrouded in fog, the ship swung into its berth at Kowloon guided by the pilot and captain alone, for I was far too busy stealing pillowcases to give them the assistance they clamored for.

Eleven coolies in massive capes woven of rushes bore our baggage to the customs shed; in a lather of hysteria, scattering cumshaw about me like grain, I deposited in a bonded godown the hundred cartons of cigarettes I had laid by for emergencies ahead. Within a couple of hours, His Britannic Majesty's watchdogs had assured themselves that our gear contained no firearms, gold, or opium, and we were afloat again.

The ancient, leaky wallah-wallah bearing us to Hong Kong Island was almost scuppers awash under our luggage; bailing like madmen, soaked to the skin, the four of us beseeched the boatmen to pull for the distant shore. The little craft rose, fell, and rose again, and for a horrid instant I feared we were all foredoomed to Davy Jones's locker. Then I dauntlessly brushed the rain from my face, encircled my wife's waist, and spoke the words that give a woman the courage to go on.

"You got me into this rat race, sweetheart," I said. "I'll never forget as long as I live." A few simple words, and yet they gave her the stability she lacked. I saw her lips frame the phrase, "You utter, utter darling," but she was too moved to pronounce it. And so, hand in hand and neck in noose, we rode forward into the promise of a new dawn.

Friday, September 19, 2003

[9/19/2011] Perelman Tonight: Putting on the feedbag -- Part 2 of "The Wild Blue Yonder" (Chapter 3 of "The Swiss Family Perelman") (continued)

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"The barrage of vittles that bombarded the President Cleveland's passengers on her sixth Pacific crossing was indescribable; the closest analogy I can offer is the Homeric fodder the Hoosiers were wont to stow away in Indiana at the turn of the century, as described by George Ade in his immortal 'Fable of the Waistband That Was Taut Up Till the Moment It Gave Way.' The chief steward apparently felt that unless every man jack of us was carried groaning with heartburn from the table, mutiny would sweep the ship."

-- from tonight's installment of "The Wild Blue Yonder"

The Swiss Family PearlmanChapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder,"Part 2 of 3

The décor of the President Cleveland had little in common with that of the ocean greyhounds we remembered from the early Thirties, nor, indeed, with any recognizable nautical tradition. Industrial designers and interior decorators had blown their tops, investing her public rooms with a profusion of monel metal, formica and glass plastics, and splashy murals depicting generously endowed nereids sporting among the billows with dolphins. Through those refined and ruthlessly air-conditioned precincts moved phalanxes of cat-footed waiters dedicated to anticipating your every wish. It was overpoweringly functional and as hygienic as a brain clinic, but every so often you felt a catch in your throat at the memory of those antebellum French cabin boats, with their matchless bouquet of lavabo, spilt Pinard, hot salt water, and garlic.

Once the napkin was furled under the jowls and you started tucking in the groceries, though, nostalgia died like a dog. The barrage of vittles that bombarded the President Cleveland's passengers on her sixth Pacific crossing was indescribable; the closest analogy I can offer is the Homeric fodder the Hoosiers were wont to stow away in Indiana at the turn of the century, as described by George Ade in his immortal "Fable of the Waistband That Was Taut Up Till the Moment It Gave Way."

The chief steward apparently felt that unless every man jack of us was carried groaning with heartburn from the table, mutiny would sweep the ship. To this end he plied us at each meal with eighteen or twenty recherché appetizers like caviar, herring filets, soused mackerel, North Sea sprats, cracked crab, sardellen, and Philadelphia head cheese; an array of soups, broths, and bisques distilled from every crustacean, fowl, and quadruped ever classified by Buffon; fish snared the width and breadth of the Seven Seas; eggs and rarebits innumerable; entrées employing the flesh not only of common edible animals but of bears, wolves, stags, boars, hartebeests, springboks, and wapiti; cold buffets and salads of endless variety and ingenuity; and sweetmeats, savories, and cheeses that made the head ring with their succulence and scope.

Personally, I am an ascetic type boy; just give me a soupçon of pâté de foie gras, a cup of vichyssoise, a filet of Dover sole, a small entrecote about the size of a longshoreman's hand flanked by potatoes Anna and hothouse peas, a galantine of capon in spiced jelly, a mixed green salad, a pot de crème au chocolat, a few fragments of Pont l'Évêque, and a touch of Brazilian coffee -- give me little else, I repeat, and I can curl up on the bare floor with my tartan wrapped around me. But I do think there is no more appalling sight than people stuffing themselves indiscriminately, and there were times in that dining saloon, particularly after I had finished eating, when the gluttony of my neighbors forced me to avert my eyes.

One of the worst offenders, though it costs me an effort to confess it, was my own good lady, who was frequently to be observed recumbent in a deck-chair following these debauches, peepers as heavy-lidded as a constrictor who has just engorged a chicken. I would chide her lightly, throwing in joking allusions to Kate Smith and the three-toed sloth, but no entreaty could dissipate her lethargy. As a result, I was invariably forced to interrupt work I should have been doing, such as reading aloud extracts from the Kamasutra to an inconsolable divorcee behind a lifeboat, and go below to supervise the children's lessons.

Our initial sessions, truthfully, were none too rewarding. The bulk of the problems in their arithmetic dealt with an unattractive dullard named Farmer Brown who had cut up his lower forty into rhomboids or isosceles triangles and was unable to compute the square of the hypotenuse. After breaking my nails on his dilemma, I explained to the cubs that if, instead of mousing around with Euclid, Brown would set out a little marijuana in his fields, he could check both erosion and foreclosure.

Rather than rehash poppycock of no conceivable use in Southeast Asia, I got down to brass tacks. With the aid of a blanket and Nick Scarne's admirable treatise on dice, I gave the young a bit of instruction in calculating odds, fading, and supplicating the bones. I also taught them a few simple methods of smuggling contraband past customs officials, the technique of haggling with pedicab drivers and rickshaw men, and the minimum provocation needed to kick or cuif one's native boys.

We concluded with several rudimentary exercises in black market manipulation, at which they showed an adroitness and chicanery that would have shamed a weasel. I could not help but feel a glow of fatherly pride subsequently in Hong Kong when I met them skulking along Ice House Street, pockets stuffed with rupees, Straits dollars, and Indonesian guilders, for I knew that at last my drudgery had borne fruit.

Thursday, September 18, 2003

[9/18/2011] Perelman Tonight: Aboard the President Cleveland -- Part 1 of "The Wild Blue Yonder" (Chapter 3 of "The Swiss Family Perelman")

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"If you happened to be an albatross, booby, or kestralwinging on graceful pinions west of the Farallones . . ."

"There would have been one emigrant whose savoir-vivre and Apollo-like fairness set him as far apart from his fellows as Spinoza from a swineherd. Blessed with a disposition as tractable as a cougar's, possessed of the rare ability to comprehend only that which redounded to his own advantage, he had literally lifted himself to insignificance by his own bootstraps."

-- from "The Wild Blue Yonder"

The Swiss Family PerelmanChapter 3, "The Wild Blue Yonder,"Part 1 of 3

IF BY SOME ODD QUIRK OF CIRCUMSTANCE you had happened to be an albatross, booby, or kestrel on the morning of January 23, 1949, winging on graceful pinions west of the Farallones, you might have descried out of your wicked little red-rimmed eyes a white pinpoint on the horizon. Inquisitively wheeling closer on the chance that it might be other boobies, you would have been chopfallen to discern a trim gray vessel of approximately twenty-three thousand gross registered tons, steaming S.S.W. on the Great Circle route from San Francisco to Hong Kong and swiftly bearing six hundred escapists beyond the reach of Milton Berle and the National Retail Credit Association.

Unless you were inherently a masochist, one glance at the passengers would have satisfied your curiosity. On the boat deck far below there would have been visible twenty or thirty retired wowsers in flowered lanai shirts and Lundberg caps, variously engaged in honeycombing their livers with bourbon, tickling skittish widows and cheating each other at shuffleboard, and reviling the Securities and Exchange Commission. The juxtaposition of their fuchsia-colored phizzes and the implausible turquoise sky, of the dazzling white superstructure and the emerald sea, would have produced an effect strikingly akin to a Kodachrome off register; and feathers screaming, you would have gone into a steep bank and made for Pitcairn with the conviction that you had had a pretty narrow squeak.

Overlooked in your quick scrutiny of the President Cleveland, however, there would have been one emigrant whose savoir-vivre and Apollo-like fairness set him as far apart from his fellows as Spinoza from a swineherd. Blessed with a disposition as tractable as a cougar's, possessed of the rare ability to comprehend only that which redounded to his own advantage, he had literally lifted himself to insignificance by his own bootstraps. From every fold of his radiant, saintly face (which by another odd quirk of circumstance happened to be my own) shone forth the man's passionate credo: take nothing but what is not actually nailed down. As he perched on a stool in the Hurricane Bar, pensively sipping his aperitif and appraising his features in a small hand-mirror, he knew a moment of deep melancholy. What a chasm separated him from the trivial, shallow creatures about him, he thought sadly. Would it ever be possible to bridge the gulf, to free these poor blind grubs from their cocoons and aid them to soar with him onto the astral plane?

I had had several ponies of Reckitt's Blue and was feeling tolerably well starched when my wife entered, rudely short-circuiting my reverie. She exuded the special aura of triumph women display after spending several hundred dollars of other people's savings at the hairdresser's, and her coiffure, each serpent tightly finger-waved, fairly gleamed. "Here's a cable for you, bub," she said pompously.

While I busied myself opening it -- I was at the stage where envelope flaps showed a tendency to fight me -- she apprised me of an announcement on the loudspeaker that all passengers would be retarded as the ship proceeded westward.

"Hm-m-m, I thought they had reached their nadir," I commented. "Hot ziggety -- what's this?"

"Good news, dear?" she asked eagerly.

"Wait till you hear," I chortled. "Remember that tiresome old barn of ours in the country we remodeled into a playroom at ruinous expense? Well, it seems that your nephew was fooling with some matches and now we have space for the tennis court I've always dreamed of."

"Yes, and think of all the charcoal we'll have for our wienie roasts in future," she agreed joyously. A tiny cloud momentarily overshadowed her even tinier face. "I do wish it could have been one of our children who was responsible. They never seem to have any enterprise."

"There, there," I consoled her. "They'll be just as toxic as that big lunkhead after they've lived in the Orient. Where are they, by the way?" A hasty catechism of the deck stewards revealed that Abby was dealing fan-tan with three Chinese bust-out men in the cardroom, while Adam, assisted by another supercharged delinquent, had tied up Sparks and was sending out distress signals to the Asiatic Squadron. Reminded by the cool liquid notes of the luncheon gong that I had taken on no cool liquids for almost five minutes, I rectified the oversight and we joined the other colorfully clad tax evaders streaming down for their midday carbohydrates.

The décor of the President Cleveland had little in common with that of the ocean greyhounds we remembered from the early Thirties, nor, indeed, with any recognizable nautical tradition. Industrial designers and interior decorators had blown their tops, investing her public rooms with a profusion of monel metal, formica and glass plastics, and splashy murals depicting generously endowed nereids sporting among the billows with dolphins. Through those refined and ruthlessly air-conditioned precincts moved phalanxes of cat-footed waiters dedicated to anticipating your every wish. It was overpoweringly functional and as hygienic as a brain clinic, but every so often you felt a catch in your throat at the memory of those antebellum French cabin boats, with their matchless bouquet of lavabo, spilt Pinard, hot salt water, and garlic.